Hopeless
by Pocru
Summary: I’m sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly.


As far as I understood it, there used to be these things called "two minute hate", where people would gather around and watch a Telescreen that was supposed to inspire them to love Big Brother more.

We don't have those anymore. In fact, we don't have much of anything anymore.

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._

Instead, we're constantly told what to do. They're in our heads now. Whispering, yelling, demanding… they tell us when to laugh, when to cry, and when to sit silently and take it without complaint. If you don't? You can't not do what they want. You just do. We're puppets now, our flimsy wooden wrists tied to invisible strings.

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._

Echoing, repeating, a choir of voices singing the same empty words in my skull. But I'm used to it. That's all my life ever was. Slogans and pictures and words flying through my head, rushed in and out like passengers on a train. They stay just long enough to stink up the place before leaving to make room for a new, disgusting odor. It was revolting, and we all knew it: but what could we do? The enemy was everywhere. In our food. In our homes. They ran the government and ran the economy. Everything was under the domain of Big Brother. We were the flock of this new-age Jesus, whose guidance and light lead us deeper and deeper into the spiraling darkness of oblivion. The darker it got, the brighter he shined, making the brainless masses believe nothings changed.

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._

We weren't chained to the cave anymore, watching a drama of shadows on the hard stone walls. We were just rocks. Worthless, dull, blunt rocks. Between all of us we had the intellectual capability of a drunk infant.

So who am I? How did I escape that dreary nonexistence of a hypnotized vegetable?

Stepping on a rock is no fun. It doesn't have the same squishy, sick satisfaction of smashing a human's face in with your steel-toed boots.

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._

They needed me. They knew, with time, my chip would malfunction. That I could be freed from the never-ending parade of propaganda and begin to question this all-powerful Big Brother, who for all his claims of divine benevolence has never actually made a single person happy in his entire life. All they needed was time. Then, they could rekindle something they lost when they utilized the chip in the first place: their need to oppress someone.

To make someone aware of how miserable and bleak this world was, so they could crush them again, and again, and again, and again…

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._

I couldn't move. My body was frozen like a marble statue on the chair on which I sat. I couldn't blink. I couldn't twitch. No matter how much I struggled against my own mind, my willpower could not overcome the inanimate object planted into the fertile soil of my brain. I sat, frozen, the loaded gun's steel fusing to my palm, my finger pressed to the trigger, the barrel pushed onto my sweaty skin. Only my tears could move, the salty rivers sliding down my pale skin, soaking me, reminding me to my horror that I was still alive.

I had tried to steal their satisfaction. I wanted to know it was possible for someone to claim one victory over that fucker, Big Brother.

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._

But I was wrong.

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._

It is hopeless.

_I'm sorry, Violet. The emotion you just experienced is against regulations. The Ministry of Love will pick you up shortly._


End file.
